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Dell PowerStore vs NetApp E-Series comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 3, 2026

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Everpure FlashArray
Sponsored
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
233
Ranking in other categories
All-Flash Storage (2nd)
Dell PowerStore
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
249
Ranking in other categories
Data Warehouse (7th), NAS (2nd), Enterprise SAN (1st), All-Flash Storage (1st), NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays (1st)
NetApp E-Series
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
5.0
Number of Reviews
6
Ranking in other categories
NVMe All-Flash Storage Arrays (12th)
 

Featured Reviews

Sowjanya MV - PeerSpot reviewer
Technical Lead at Wipro Limited
Has improved performance for mission-critical workloads and enabled seamless non-disruptive upgrades
The availability is 99.99%, which is the main factor any customer would need because their data should be available whenever they want to access it. This is one main critical thing. It is very easy to upgrade since Pure Storage FlashArray handles it well. Everything is non-disruptive now; previously, there were forklift shifts, but now that is not the case. Pure Storage FlashArray says no to forklift upgrades. Usually hardware requires downtime, but Pure Storage FlashArray has improved their footprint so that they are not asking for downtime; everything is just a non-disruptive activity, which is why customers are more inclined towards Pure Storage FlashArray. Customers want more of the models in their environment due to the performance they are giving, and everything is in one Pure1 Array console where we can view all the models on one page or just an orchestration tool. You don't miss anything; you have replication, notifications about replication, and details about which host groups replication is happening in and if that replication is successful or failed. On a daily basis, our purpose is to create volumes for infrastructure; our daily activities include creating volumes and mapping them to the host, doing any migrations from a VM, clearing the data stores, and carving the volumes to those VMs. One key factor is the data compression with a ratio of 5:1, focusing on space efficiency, inline deduplication, and the compression Pure Storage FlashArray works on; that is a major factor we can suggest to any customer. Analytical capabilities are crucial. Daily, we check the throughput and consumption, and Pure Storage FlashArray provides predictions for one year regarding usage. This prediction helps plan updates well ahead. For support, we just raise a case, and they follow up and get it done. There is also AI readiness, but with the model R2, we don't have much of that AI readiness. For others, we do have AI readiness that predicts capacity based on daily or monthly trends, enabling us to analyze how much space we need or if we need to expand the disk shelf. From an operational point of view, a good feature is that if you accidentally delete a volume, it will be retained in the destroyed state for the next twenty-four hours, which is not the same with any other vendor. I have worked in this storage domain for the past fifteen years, and this option is remarkable, benefiting any L1 or L2 engineer. Additionally, from a compliance perspective, Pure Storage FlashArray has REST APIs enabled. I have not explored automation much, but from a security standpoint, it is strong with encryption data. If you want to automate, you can easily integrate with all clouds and explore Pure Cloud for scheduling workloads, including volume creation. Customers find benefit in Pure Storage FlashArray's single management pane of glass due to the dual controller and active-active setup. If one of the controllers goes down, all workloads automatically shift to the other controller, ensuring their data is safe and accessible at all times. This is a highlighted feature that any customer desires because their data should always be accessible. For SAN workloads, we use Pure Storage FlashArray because for SAN FC fiber channel, we don't use it; we use NetApp for NAS activities. We have clearly split this, so SAN is for mission-critical applications, while network-attached storage handles file systems. This architecture helps us maximize the benefit from Pure Storage FlashArray due to the significant workloads from this giant retail client. From a footprint and energy consumption perspective, you can see energy consumption from the Pure1 storage portal on a daily basis, and it is very compact. The three models we use consume only three units, which is quite low. From a footprint and data center perspective, it doesn't occupy much space. As everything moves to cloud, there are requirements to avoid excess spending on data centers, and Pure Storage FlashArray is efficient in energy consumption and is environmentally friendly.
reviewer2304864 - PeerSpot reviewer
Vmware Windows Senior Engineer at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
Resilience has supported proactive management and secured audit readiness across multiple sites
The resilience in Dell PowerStore benefits my company from an auditing perspective because we know we have that resilience in place. I see Dell PowerStore playing a bigger role in the future because we are starting to use it more, and that is pushing it. The biggest return on investment for me when using Dell PowerStore is scalability. Scalability is key. I can amplify that scalability is the biggest return on investment because we have redundancy between two sites; if something goes down, we have to manage it, but we want to do it proactively.
Mir Gulzar Ahmed - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Manager at Synergy Computers
High-throughput storage has supported real-time video surveillance and long-term archiving needs
Regarding scalability, I think there is no problem. While there is always room for improvement in any product, to my knowledge, NetApp is a visionary company that enhances product features consistently. They actively respond to new requirements and technology changes requested by customers, improving scalability, management ease, features, and introducing progressive software releases, patches, and upgrades. Scalability does depend on model selection, with entry-level systems being cheaper but able to scale to a certain level, while greater scalability requires higher-end models. For example, NetApp E-Series includes the E600 and EF600 for enterprise-class storage. The FAS series includes models such as 1K, C190, C30, and C70, demonstrating how NetApp evolves based on customer demands and responds proactively to future requirements in storage technology. From my perspective, I believe any improvement could involve adding another model between the existing entry-level and high-end options in NetApp E-Series since there are presently only two models. This simplicity in offering may help customers, but an in-between model would provide options for those needing mid-range solutions, making NetApp competitive in that space. The FAS and AFF series certainly have more model options based on customer needs and costs, whereas NetApp E-Series needs to expand beyond two choices. Regarding error handling in NetApp E-Series, because it is a cost-effective but not an intelligent storage solution, the error handling is not sufficient. The system is reliable, but its management is basic as it runs on firmware. In contrast, the FAS series includes numerous tools and software for error handling, providing better troubleshooting support. Therefore, while NetApp E-Series offers reliability due to its cost-effectiveness, there is a trade-off in terms of error management capabilities.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The stability is very good. I've done destructive testing on it and never had any type of storage outages from it."
"Running on Pure has given us the ability to scale out our SQL environments."
"The simplicity of it. The performance is good, but the simplicity is the best thing. Storage management is quite complex, but Pure Storage is easy to manage."
"It overperforms both in terms of storage capacity and throughput, and bandwidth capability."
"Biggest lesson learned: Why didn't I switch sooner?"
"Very stable; no worries about how much it can handle."
"With Pure Storage FlashArray we have been able to deploy several thousand VDI servers, virtual machines, very quickly and efficiently."
"Everpure FlashArray has positively impacted my organization, particularly in performance and reliability, as we've had good improvements, making our applications run faster and giving us more confidence that they will not crash."
"Dell PowerStore has a more simplified, user-friendly interface compared to the different storage products I have from Dell."
"The most valuable feature is the three-to-one data reduction."
"PowerStore helps to simplify IT operations."
"I would assess the timeframes to deploy it as efficient."
"Dell PowerStore makes everything so fast, and because it is connected to the VDI, everybody that logs in gets the same desktop and the same experience."
"A particularly valuable feature is its simplicity."
"The solution is stable."
"In terms of reliability, scalability, compression, deduplication, and TCO, Dell is a preferred partner."
"The product is easy to use."
"The Snapshot feature is actually widely used; it is a feature that only NetApp E-Series has and it is quite good."
"Customers go for the E Series if they need backup storage because it is cheap."
"If we select the best use case for NetApp E-Series based on its intended purpose, I would rate it a ten."
"My customers are satisfied with the performance."
"The overall experience has been positive."
 

Cons

"I would appreciate improvements on daily health checks."
"The only thing I think could be improved is price. The price is the main concern for our customers."
"The GUI is simplistic and basic. I feel like it's explanatory, but not enough, it needs a little more to it."
"The product could improve by providing the capability to support NAS storage – CIFS and NFS."
"Price per terabyte is substantially higher than their competition. We would like to see it drop."
"The price of this solution could be improved."
"I would rate this solution an eight because we have had outages. The commit times went very high in the database. The whole array went down so our customers were down for around eight hours. This was a very big outage which could have been our fault because we didn't do the upgrade in time."
"We ran into some issues with the program at first and we had to work around those issues to fix our problems."
"I may see ROI in the future, but so far, I do not see any savings."
"The NAS part is very poor. It's very basic. Even Dell EMC has said that to us. We are waiting for version 3 of PowerStore for that. This must be improved and it is in the roadmap."
"Dell is struggling in terms of support SLAs as long as the Pakistan market is concerned since Dell has not been able to give a fixed time commitment from a support perspective, which is a challenge for customers."
"The design needs to be something similar to Pure Storage. It would be beneficial if there are different color or lighting options for different product casings. Different colors are helpful when working in the data center server room."
"The availability sometimes presents challenges where we can't get the requirement."
"I was hoping that this new product would have a great simple user interface, similar to Dell Unity that we sold and used extensively. Instead, I found the user interface to be a step back from what was done with the other product, which could be tied to the whole architecture of the platform."
"Data reduction needs improvement."
"There is no Synchronize replication feature on the storage."
"The solution must provide more training courses."
"Regarding error handling in NetApp E-Series, because it is a cost-effective but not an intelligent storage solution, the error handling is not sufficient."
"With NetApp E-Series, when we are running active-active NAS4, sometimes due to either an issue or a bug, we experience failures. At least twice yearly, we have seen this issue. When it occurs, we lose critical systems such as MQ."
"NetApp should add more production lines to the E series so we can make flexible solutions more easily."
"Getting through first level to second level takes two hours minimum."
"Though the performance is there, if NetApp wants to be competitive with the others, it must improve their business continuity."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It could always be lower, but it's okay."
"Pricing is very competitive, and it's better than other competitors."
"Because of the SSD, it is cheaper because I am not purchasing so many disks."
"The price was more favorable than Dell EMC."
"It is a cheaper solution."
"Pure Storage is expensive. It comes with features, so you get what you pay for. It is expensive compared to our old storage systems, but from the amount of human effort that you have to pay to babysit a storage system, it reduces that. I don't know if the TCO is reduced, but it's not a concern for us."
"The cost of Pure Storage is subjective and determined by your environment. Pure Storage tends to be more expensive than NetApp, but it is cheaper than EMC. Performance varies with data workload, making cost considerations complex."
"It is cost-effective because after buying a subscription, they provide a service to upgrade hardware for free. They are providing so many features. When you consider the features provided, it is cost-effective."
"The price is not cheap, but it's worth it for the features you get from the storage. If you can afford it, you are probably buying the best solution that you can have for this virtual environment."
"The licensing for this solution is good and is in the mid-range tier."
"If we use the 500 or 1000, the licensing and pricing are reasonable. PowerStore can compete with any vendor and the price isn't that expensive."
"The pricing is good. There's no need to pay for a license; it's all-inclusive."
"Dell PowerStore charges for the hardware warranty every three years. The price will depend on the storage model or how much hardware it has."
"The rate is always too high. Nobody likes paying for it. I have not seen a client yet who says that the price should be higher. Initially, people look at it, but when they see what the benefits are, it is a no-brainer. We can give them good pricing at the outset."
"HCL Tech has a TLA with Dell, so in terms of price point, we are very competitive. Based on my experience, the cost of Dell PowerStore for around 500 GB of capacity is very competitive compared to any other platform in the market."
"The solution’s pricing is always too high."
"The price is reasonable for NetApp E-Series."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
13%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Outsourcing Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Computer Software Company
9%
Outsourcing Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
17%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Computer Software Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business73
Midsize Enterprise38
Large Enterprise161
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business83
Midsize Enterprise49
Large Enterprise124
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

Which should I choose: HPE 3PAR StoreServ or Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform F Series?
Both are great platforms, but if you are considering all flash solutions, I would recommend you to consider Pure Stor...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Pure Storage FlashArray?
When comparing cost, I find that the cost is either the same or slightly higher, but that is returned by the ease of ...
What needs improvement with Pure Storage FlashArray?
The only thing I think could be improved is price. The price is the main concern for our customers.
What do you think about Dell EMC PowerStore? Is it actually a new product?
PowerStore is flexible, scalable, simple, and performant with market-leading economics for a wide range of legacy and...
How does Dell's EMC PowerStore compare with its EMC Unity XT?
Dell EMC PowerStore is a unified storage platform that has the added benefit of being scalable. The automated managem...
What's the difference between DELL EMC Powerstore and Powermax NVMe?
Dell PowerStore is an all-solid-state midrange storage system. It has many internal elements taken from other Dell of...
What needs improvement with NetApp E-Series?
Regarding scalability, I think there is no problem. While there is always room for improvement in any product, to my ...
What is your primary use case for NetApp E-Series?
We sell NetApp E-Series as engineered machines like FlexPod, which is used where high throughput and native storage p...
What advice do you have for others considering NetApp E-Series?
I work with VMware products, including VMware server, ESXi, and my experience is on vCenter Server, ESXi, virtualizat...
 

Also Known As

Pure Storage FlashArray
PowerStore
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Nielsen, Lamar Advertising, LinkedIn, Betfair, UT-Dallas
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Find out what your peers are saying about Dell PowerStore vs. NetApp E-Series and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
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